“You don’t offend me,” she said, without the faintest note of displeasure in her tone. “I am accustomed to stand in the pillory of my own past life. I sometimes ask myself if it was all my fault. I sometimes wonder if Society had no duties toward me when I was a child selling matches in the street--when I was a hard-working girl fainting at my needle for want of food.” Her voice faltered a little for the first time as it pronounced those words; she waited a moment, and recovered herself. “It’s too late to dwell on these things now,” she said, resignedly. “Society can subscribe to reclaim me; but Society can’t take me back. You see me here in a place of trust--patiently, humbly, doing all the good I can. It doesn’t matter! Here, or elsewhere, what I _am_ can never alter what I _was_. For three years past all that a sincerely penitent woman can do I have done. It doesn’t matter! Once let my past story be known, and the shadow of it covers me; the kindest people shrink.” She waited again. Would a word of sympathy come to comfort her from the other woman’s lips? No! Miss Roseberry was shocked; Miss Roseberry was confused. “I am very sorry for you,” was all that Miss Roseberry could say. “Everybody is sorry for me,” answered the nurse, as patiently as ever; “everybody is kind to me. But the lost place is not to be regained. I can’t get back! I can’t get back?” she cried, with a passionate outburst of despair--checked instantly the moment it had escaped her. “Shall I tell you what my experience has been?” she resumed. “Will you hear the story of Magdalen--in modern times?” Grace drew back a step; Mercy instantly understood her. “I am going to tell you nothing that you need shrink from hearing,” she said. “A lady in your position would not understand the trials and the struggles that I have passed through. My story shall begin at the Refuge. The matron sent me out to service with the character that I had honestly earned--the character of a reclaimed woman. I justified the confidence placed in me; I was a faithful servant. One day my mistress sent for me--a kind mistress, if ever there was one yet. ‘Mercy, I am sorry for you; it has come out that I took you from a Refuge; I shall lose every servant in the house; you must go.’ I went back to the matron--another kind woman. She received me like a mother. ‘We will try again, Mercy; don’t be cast down.’ I told you I had been in Canada?” Grace began to feel interested in spite of herself. She answered with something like warmth in her tone. She returned to her chair--placed at its safe and significant distance from the chest. The nurse went on: